RINO Warner Proposes 55-mph Speed Limit

As a recent Virginia resident, I spent a year and a half thoroughly unimpressed with my elected Senators to the U.S. Senate. I became a Virginia resident just in time to vote for George Allen, who promptly lost to Jim Webb in the fall of 2006. One of my main disappointments with Senators Webb and Warner was that both were on board with the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill (aka Amnesty Bill).

However, my disappointment with the overall government and commonwealth of Virginia didn’t stop there. We had high state taxes and ridiculous speeding fines. While I was a resident, Virginia instituted a minimum $1500 fine (as much as $3500) for speeding 15 mph over the state instituted speed limit. You were only smacked with this fine if you were a Virginia resident. Out of state commuters speeding in Virginia didn’t face this same penalty.

Going along with the theme of an overreaching government, Senator John Warner is proposing a nationalized 55 mph speed limit for the nation’s interstates, the same speed limit that was in place from 1974 through 1995. Apparently Senator Warner thinks that the American people are too dumb to drive and pay for gas themselves.

This from the Associated Press:

An influential Republican senator suggested Thursday that Congress might want to consider reimposing a national speed limit to save gasoline and possibly ease fuel prices.

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to look into what speed limit would provide optimum gasoline efficiency given current technology. He said he wants to know if the administration might support efforts in Congress to require a lower speed limit.

Warner cited studies that showed the 55 mph speed limit saved 167,000 barrels of oil a day, or 2 percent of the country’s highway fuel consumption, while avoiding up to 4,000 traffic deaths a year

“Given the significant increase in the number of vehicles on America’s highway system from 1974 to 2008, one could assume that the amount of fuel that could be conserved today is far greater,” Warner wrote Bodman.

Gas prices in this country are a made-to-order issue for the Republican party. If the Republicans, including John McCain, ran a campaign based on a platform of domestic drilling and exploration, they might stop a looming Democratic onslaught. All the polls show that a dramatic majority of American voters support more domestic drilling and exploration, including in areas such as ANWR and the outer-continental shelf.

The energy department responded to Senator Warner with the following:

Energy Department spokeswoman Angela Hill said the department will review Warner’s letter but added, “If Congress is serious about addressing gasoline prices, they must take action on expanding domestic oil and natural gas production.”

BINGO! Forcibly decreasing usage of oil and gasoline will not cause the price of oil to drop. This same thing happened in the 1970’s and the price of gasoline went up. There were fuel shortages during the Arab oil embargo.

Democrats want to attempt to drop prices by curving demand. The only you curve demand is by ultimately stopping growth. If you stop growth in this country, you stagnate the economy. If we have a slowed economy, we have higher unemployment, more poverty, and more people depending on government for their welfare. Perhaps that is what the far left in this country wants.

We hear the phrase, “We can’t drill our way out of this.” Well, I’d like to throw out my own phrase: “We can’t conserve our way out of this.” Solar panels, mandated fluorescent light bulbs, and wind turbines aren’t going to drop the drop the price of a barrel of oil one penny. Only the principles of supply and demand will. Demand is already falling with $4 per gallon gas. The only way you get the price lower is increasing supply.

The most effective way to lower the price of oil is by flooding the market with more oil. This may take several years, but at least we’ll be on track to become less dependent on foreign oil. As of right now, we don’t have ANY tenable solution to this crisis from either Republicans or Democrats in congress. But as long as the Republicans have a guy like John Warner leading the charge for more government regulation as a solution to our problems, you can count on the Democrats having a strong majority in congress. Republicans don’t win by embracing liberal policies.